


What Love Looks Like

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Series: Monica is Alive AU [6]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: Fluff, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:38:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5582485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There aren’t really any popular models for how a relationship like this is supposed to look, so Monica and Huey and Elmer have to figure it out on their own. Fortunately they’re all very clever, for one, and they care very little about how they’re perceived by anyone else, for another. If anything, it’s more a process of self-discovery, except with “self” expanded to include two other people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Love Looks Like

**Author's Note:**

> Probably the fluffiest catworld fic to date, and that is saying something.

There aren’t really any popular models for how a relationship like this is supposed to look, so Monica and Huey and Elmer have to figure it out on their own. Fortunately they’re all very clever, for one, and they care very little about how they’re perceived by anyone else, for another. If anything, it’s more a process of self-discovery, except with “self” expanded to include two other people.

On some days it looks much the same as it did before Huey realized his attraction to Elmer was too significant to hide: Huey and Monica are married and Elmer is a hanger-on. Monica’s younger brother, when that lie seems like it will serve them better than the truth; a mutual friend, when that’s unnecessary. Sometimes he’s gone and they don’t have to make any excuses at all. (At those times, Huey grows gloomier and gloomier until he returns. And then he sulks about the smile that sneaks onto his face, as natural as the sun, when Elmer comes back. He’s still not very good at being happy.)

Other days, they find themselves reading in an ungraceful pile on the sofa even though there are some perfectly respectable armchairs less than ten feet away. It starts with Monica slipping under Huey’s arm and reading his book along with him. (It turns out that she can speed-read, too.) Then Elmer joins them, sitting on Huey’s other side or sometimes skipping straight to the part where he’s lying on his stomach across both their laps. It’s ridiculous, because Elmer is ridiculous; but the fact that it’s such an Elmer thing to do means that Huey’s smirking when he rolls his eyes, and so Elmer keeps doing it.

On some days it looks like Monica and Elmer teaming up to pull some trivial prank on Huey. On others, it looks like Monica pulling Elmer aside and letting him know that he’s pushed Huey a little too far. On others still, it’s Elmer dutifully carrying messages between Huey and Monica until whatever sore spot they accidentally found is soothed.

But on some days, it’s even simpler than any of that: it’s Huey looking from one of them to the other and then averting his eyes, embarrassed, as if that will stop them from seeing the smile on his face.

*

On one particular day, it looks like Monica spontaneously kissing Elmer on the lips when he comes home from one of his smile journeys, and all three of them freezing when they realize what’s just happened. She’s the first one to break free of the paralysis, turning to Huey with panic on her face. But he stops her apologies before they can start.

“Monica, it’s alright.”

Because of course he knows what words are on her lips; she’s spent a century and a half insisting at the slightest provocation that she likes Elmer as a friend, but Huey is the one she loves. He takes her hand and holds her gaze with his.

“Whatever it is, whatever you feel, it’s alright.”

She looks between the two of them a few times, a shy confusion on her face. Finally her eyes settle—as they always do—on Huey. “What if I’m not sure what I feel?” she asks.

“That’s alright, too,” Huey says.

Elmer nods too, his smile more serious than normal. “I’ll accept however you feel about me, Monica. I promise.”

She sighs her relief and collects herself, and then a mischievous smile tugs at her lips.

“Let me think about it a little?” she says, and then all three of them are laughing and it doesn’t matter who pulled whom into their three-way embrace first, because all they need to be happy is to be together.

*

For months after that, their relationship looks like the slow process of Monica admitting to herself that even if she doesn’t feel the same way about Elmer as she does about Huey, maybe she’s cared about him just as much for a long, long time. Both of them give her the space she needs to think about it. She doesn’t kiss Elmer again, accidentally or on purpose. But one night, as she lies in bed with Huey catching her breath, she sighs with faint irritation at where her thoughts have wandered to; and she decides she might as well voice them, because Huey will listen.

“I don’t want to do _that_ with Elmer,” she declares.

Huey, who has on a few occasions done _that_ with Elmer, only smirks a little and brushes her bangs out of her eyes. “That’s fine,” he says. “And it’s fine if you ever want to, too.”

“I really don’t. I’ve tried thinking about it, and it’s just—no. It’s like trying to imagine kissing my brother.” She makes a face at the thought. “Ugh.”

Huey nods his understanding. And then, sensing the rest of the thought that’s on her mind, he draws it out by voicing it: “But you _did_ kiss him. Elmer, I mean.”

“I did,” Monica agrees, and that’s where she keeps getting confused. It had been an instinctive thing, to press her lips to his, and a sincere one, but—

“It’s different,” she says, trying to find the words for what she means and failing. Instead she pulls Huey into a kiss—one that’s love and desire and possessiveness and all the understanding they’ve ever, ever shared. One that leaves both of them a bit breathless. For a moment, she can’t do anything but gaze at her Huey and feel how deeply they love each other. But there was a point to this, so she pulls herself together. “It’s nothing like that one,” she explains. “It’s—it was—I was just so happy he was home, so happy that it felt like my heart was going to leap out of my throat if I didn’t do something about it. I wanted to show him how happy I was. I could have just smiled, and he would’ve been fine with that, but…”

“It wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy yourself, even if it satisfied him,” Huey finishes for her.

She nods contemplatively.

“I think…” she says finally, “I think… maybe I love both of you. Is that alright?”

“What kind of hypocrite would I have to be to say no?” Huey points out with a wry smile. And then he assures her, “It’s more than alright. If he makes you happy, too, I’m glad for that.”

Monica thinks of the bitter little girl she once was, angry and scared and alone, and of how she fell in love with the boy who had the same bitter eyes as she did. And she thinks of how Elmer saw through her at once and brightly, smilingly cheered her on anyway. If she’s honest, it might’ve been Elmer rather than Huey who started the slow thaw of her heart. And now, a century and a half later, she can admit that and be okay with it.

“Both of you make me very happy,” she says, and Huey nods, understanding what she means:

The three of them are as one, impossible to untwine, and they wouldn’t want to be otherwise.

*

What it looks like the next morning is Huey rising earlier than he normally does so that he can have breakfast with Monica and Elmer, and then washing the dishes so that Monica has a little time to find the words she wants. By the time he comes back into the dining room, they’re both smiling peacefully, with an ease that Huey can never quite seem to find for himself—but as he takes the hand that Monica reaches out to him, as Elmer lifts his grinning face in Huey’s direction, he knows that the smile he gives in return is a genuine one, and he knows that this is what love looks like.


End file.
